Bill Drummond, Managing Partner of Brodies LLP, has been appointed to the board of PRIME, an alliance of law firms and legal departments across the UK that have made a commitment to broaden access to the legal profession.
Brodies is a founding member of PRIME, which encourages greater diversity in the legal profession by offering quality work experience and continuing support to young people from less privileged backgrounds.
Brodies is committed each year to offering students aged 13-17 the opportunity to take part in a structured work experience programme that is coordinated and delivered by Brodies staff representing departments across our business.
The PRIME programme, which is run across Brodies' offices in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, provides a minimum of 30-35 hours of work experience and is designed to give the young people involved an insight into all aspects of our business, not just law but also our professional support services, such as IT, Finance, HR and Marketing.
Bill will be supported by a newly formed Advisory Committee comprising teachers and PRIME alumni who will rotate on a regular basis. The Committee will act as a consultative body for the Board which is keen to ensure that, in setting its agenda and developing initiatives, it has the benefit of input from students and those working in the education sector.
Commenting on his appointment, Bill said: "We have been running a PRIME programme at Brodies since its inception, which is about five years now, and have seen the obvious potential benefits in terms of broadening young people's understanding of, and widening access to, the legal profession.
"Year on year we have found that our PRIME students have really embraced their time at Brodies and we have been able to expand the programme across our offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Everybody in the firm has been really supportive of the initiative and we have all had tremendous pleasure in seeing some of the first young people to take part in the scheme go on to study at university, including law faculties, with confidence that they can succeed.
"Our people and the PRIME students have embraced the scheme so enthusiastically and we look forward to it expanding further across Scotland and the rest of the UK."
